^ On
a 15 July:2002 The euro
trades above $1 for the first time since February 2000.

^2002 Worst beginning for a novel wins prize
On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom
had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like
when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked
and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity
in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree
of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
This beginning of an imaginary novel wins for Ms.
Rephah Berg, of Oakland, California, the top prize of $250 in
the
2002Bulwer-Lytton
Fiction Contest (where WWW means Wretched Writers Welcome)
for bad writing given annually by San Jose State University since
1982. It is named after novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton,
whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford began with: It was a
dark and stormy night... and continued with: the rain
fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked
by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in
London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely
agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the
darkness. [Chapter
1, complete, with comments]  [For your reading pleasure:
the
2001 winners, including, in the Detective category, already Rephah
Berg: The graphic crime-scene photo that stared up at Homicide
Inspector Chuck Venturi from the center of his desk was not a pretty
picture, though it could have been, Chuck mused, had it only been
shot in soft focus with a shutter speed of 1/125 second at f 5.6 or
so.]  [see below some entries
in the Vile Pun category]  BULWER~LYTTON ONLINE:
[beginning of novels quoted]:Vril,
The Power of the Coming Race _ Vril,
The Power of the Coming Race
 The
Last Days of Pompeii[“HO, Diomed, well met! Do you
sup with Glaucus to-night?” said a young man of small stature,
who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved
him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.]  Rienzi
[It was on a summer evening that two youths might be seen walking
beside the banks of the Tiber, not far from that part of its winding
course which sweeps by the base of Mount Aventine.]
 Zanoni
[At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist
named Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great
genius, but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions
something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste
of the Dilettanti of Naples.]
 The
Lady of Lyons(an 1838 play)

2001The New York Times, in one
of its longest stories ever (over 4 pages), reports that many of the
Florida absentee ballots in the 2000 presidential election were illegally
counted for George W. Bush.2001 In the state of
San Luis Potosí, Mexico, police stop a speeding car with US licence
plates driven by Eduardo del Refugio. In the trunk they find a 7-kg Siberian
tiger cub. There are only some 200 Siberian tigers in the wild. They are
a highly protected endangered species.2000 The United
Nations launched a successful military operation to help 222 Indian peacekeepers
and 11 military observers break out of a rebel stronghold in Sierra Leone

1998 No to Lockheed
+ Grunman
The Pentagon intensifies its efforts
to scuttle Lockheed Martin’s slated mega-merger with fellow defense
giant Northrop Grumman. The administration announces plans to bring
Lockheed to court on anti-trust charges. The Pentagon’s hardball play
comes a few months after it has first announced its opposition to
the proposed $10.7 billion deal.
During the intervening time, the government had attempted to work
with both Lockheed and Northrop to make their union more palatable.
But, despite Lockheed’s willingness to divest nearly $1 billion in
assets, the Pentagon still felt that the merger would staunch competition
in the defense industry. The government also feared that a Lockheed/Northrop
union would clog up a disproportionate share of the industry’s electronic
assets. While Lockheed disputed
these charges, they nonetheless wilted at the thought of a court battle
with the Pentagon: on July 16, Lockheed officials announced that they
were scrapping the multi-billion dollar merger. But, even in the wake
of this decision, Lockheed refused to cede the point to the government.
Rather, company chief Vance Coffman downplayed the failed merger,
stating that “continuing litigation…is not in the best interests of
the” company and its “customers, shareholders, (and) employees.”

^1998 Pointcast calls off IPO PointCast announces
that it is calling off its long-awaited initial public stock offering.
CEO David Dorman says that the company is entering discussions about
strategic alliances with potential partners instead. Tremendous hype
had surrounded the company's "push" technology in 1997, but subscribership
failed to grow as rapidly as predicted. Some companies balked at adopting
the system because of fears it would overload corporate networks.

1991 US troops leave northern Iraq 1991
Group of Seven leaders opened their 17th annual economic summit in London,
plunging into debate over aid to the Soviet Union. 1987
John Poindexter testifies at Iran-Contra hearings

1985 Aldus ships PageMaker,
the first desktop publishing program. Overnight, the software would
spawn the new industry of desktop publishing. With the introduction
of powerful layout and design tools, magazines, newspapers, newsletters,
and other publications no longer had to be laid out by hand through
a painstaking cut-and-paste process. Aldus PageMaker quickly became
the "killer application" for the Mac, driving sales just like VisiCalc,
the first spreadsheet, had driven sales of the Apple II.

1982 Senate confirms George Shultz as 60th sec of state
by vote of 97-0 1976 36-hr kidnap of 26 schoolchildren
& their bus driver in Calif

1976 A 36-hour kidnap ordeal begins
for 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver as they are abducted near Chowchilla,
Calif., by three gunmen and imprisoned in an underground cell. (The captives
would escape unharmed.)

^1971 Nixon announces trip to China
During a live television and radio
broadcast, President Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing
that he will visit communist China the following year. The statement
marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-Chinese relations. At first
glance, Nixon seemed like the last American president who would ever
consider a visit to the People's Republic of China. Since the communists
came to power in China in 1949, Nixon had been one of the most vociferous
critics of American efforts to establish diplomatic relations with
the Chinese. He was known as a fervent Cold Warrior, and had been
one of the leading figures in the post-World War II Red Scare, during
which the U.S. government launched massive investigations into possible
communist subversion in America. By 1971, however, a number of factors
pushed the anticommunist Nixon to make the dramatic decision to begin
a rapprochement with communist China. First and foremost was the Vietnam
War. In 1969, shortly after taking office, Nixon promised the American
people "peace with honor" in Vietnam. Two years later, and with thousands
more Americans having been killed in the conflict, peace seemed no
closer than before. The United
States was also aware that the Chinese were eager to improve relations.
The Chinese split with Russia in the mid-1960s left the Chinese communists
looking for new allies, and diplomatic relations with America would
mean increased trade possibilities, something the growing Chinese
economy desperately wanted. Following the advice of National Security
Advisor Henry Kissinger, Nixon hoped to use the promise of closer
relations with the United States to convince the Chinese to put increased
pressure on North Vietnam--a Chinese ally--to reach an acceptable
peace settlement in the war. Other factors encouraging the visit included
the constant demands of U.S. businesses for diplomatic relations with
China so that its markets would open to American trade and investment;
Nixon's need for a dramatic act to revive his sagging popularity with
the American people; and Kissinger's hope that closer relations with
China would make the Soviet Union more receptive to U.S. diplomatic
initiatives. It was with these
ideas in mind that Nixon announced on 15 July 1971, that he was going
to make a "journey for peace" to communist China in May 1972, at the
invitation of the Chinese government. Nixon undertook his historic
visit to China the following year, thus beginning a long and slow
process of normalization of relations between the People's Republic
of China and the United States. The immediate diplomatic and political
rewards of Nixon's initiative were not readily apparent. The war in
Vietnam dragged on until January 1973, with the Chinese apparently
having little, if any, impact on North Vietnam's negotiating stance.
Nixon's trip to China did inspire a good deal of anxiety in Moscow,
but whether the policy of detente was helped or not is debatable.
The 1972 trip was certainly front-page news in the United States,
and may have been one small factor in Nixon's resounding victory in
the presidential election of that year. In
a surprise announcement, President Richard Nixon says that he will
visit Beijing, China, before May 1972. The news, issued simultaneously
in Beijing and the United States, stunned the world. Nixon reported
that he was visiting in order "to seek normalization of relations
between the two countries and to exchange views on questions of concern
to both sides." Privately, Nixon hoped that achieving a rapprochement
with China, North Vietnam's major benefactor, would convince Hanoi
to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the Vietnam War. The announcement
was preceded by an April 6 invitation for the U.S. Table Tennis team
to visit China, and by Nixon's end to the 20-year U.S. trade embargo
against China. On July 22, the North Vietnamese announced that they
viewed Nixon's visit to China as a divisive attempt by the United
States to drive a wedge between Hanoi and Beijing.

1965 Mariner 4 studies
Martian surface The unmanned spacecraft Mariner
4 passes over Mars at an altitude of 2000 m, and sends back to Earth
the first close-up images of the planet. Launched on November 28,
1964, Mariner 4 carried a television camera and six other science
instruments to study Mars and interplanetary space within the solar
system. Reaching Mars on July
14, 1965, the spacecraft begins sending back television images of
the planet just after midnight on July 15. The pictures--twenty-two
in all--reveal a vast, barren wasteland of craters and rust-colored
sand, dismissing nineteenth-century suspicions that an advanced civilization
might exist on the planet. The canals that American astronomer Percival
Lowell spied with his telescope in 1890 proved to be an optical illusion,
but ancient natural waterways of some kind seemed to be evident in
some regions of the planet. Once past Mars, Mariner 4 journeyed on
to the far side of the sun before returning to the vicinity of earth
in 1967. Communication with the spacecraft--nearly out of power by
then-- was terminated on December 21, 1967.

^1964 Goldwater nominated for US president by GOP.
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) is nominated by the Republican
Party as its candidate for president of the US. During the subsequent
campaign, Goldwater said that he thought the United States should
do whatever was necessary to win in Vietnam. At one point, he talked
about the possibility of using low-yield atomic weapons to defoliate
enemy infiltration routes, but he never actually advocated the use
of nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia. Although Goldwater later clarified
his position, the Democrats very effectively portrayed him as a trigger-happy
warmonger. This reputation, whether deserved or not, was a key factor
in his crushing defeat at the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson, who won
61 percent of the vote to Goldwater's 39 percent.

^1941 Double agent starts deceiving the Nazis
Master spy Juan Pujol Garcia sends his first communiqué to Germany
from Britain. But who was he spying for? Juan Garcia, a Spaniard,
ran an elaborate multiethnic spy network that included a Dutch airline
steward, a British censor for the Ministry of Information, a Cabinet
office clerk, a U.S. soldier in England, and a Welshman sympathetic
to fascism. All were engaged in gathering secret information on the
British-Allied war effort, which was then transmitted back to Berlin.
Garcia was in the pay of the Nazis. The Germans knew him as "Arabel,"
whereas the English knew him as Garbo.
The English knew a lot more about him, in fact, than the Germans,
as Garcia was a British double agent. None of Garcia's spies were
real, and the disinformation he transmitted to Germany was fabricated-phony
military "secrets" that the British wanted planted with the Germans
to divert them from genuine military preparations and plans.
Among the most effective of Garcia's
deceptions took place in June 1944, when he managed to convince Hitler
that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was just a "diversionary maneuver
designed to draw off enemy reserves in order to make a decisive attack
in another place"--playing right into the mindset of German intelligence,
which had already suspected that this might be the case. (Of course,
it wasn't.) Among the "agents"
that Garcia employed in gathering this "intelligence" was Donny, leader
of the World Aryan Order; Dick, an "Indian fanatic"; and Dorick, a
civilian who lived at a North Sea port. All these men were inventions
of Garcia's imagination, but they lent authenticity to his reports
back to Berlin--so much so that Hitler, while visiting occupied France,
awarded Garcia the Iron Cross for his service to the Reich! That same
year, 1944, Garcia received his true reward, the title of MBE--Member
of the British Empire--for his service to the England and the Allied
cause. This ingenious Spaniard had proved to be one of the Allies'
most successful counterintelligence tools.

^1862 CSS Arkansas attacks Union ships
The CSS Arkansas, the most
effective ironclad on the Mississippi River, battles with Union ships
commanded by Admiral David Farragut, severely damaging three ships
and sustaining heavy damage herself. The encounter changed the complexion
of warfare on the Mississippi and helped to reverse Rebel fortunes
on the river in the summer of 1862.
In August 1861, the Confederate Congress granted funds to build two
ironclads in Memphis, Tennessee. The ships were still under construction
when Union ships captured the city in May 1862. Confederates burned
one of them to prevent capture, while the Arkansas was towed
further south. Similar in design and appearance to the more famous
CSS Virginia (Merrimack), the vessel was completed by early
July. Setting sail with a crew of 100 sailors and 60 soldiers and
commanded by Isaac Brown, the Arkansas steamed to Vicksburg,
where Farragut's gunboats were rapidly dominating the river from New
Orleans northward. At the mouth
of the Yazoo River on 15 July 1862, the Arkansas engaged
in a sharp exchange with the three Union ships sent to intercept the
ironclad. After fighting through these ships, the Arkansas
headed for the bulk of Farragut's fleet. It then sailed through the
flotilla, damaging 16 ships. Farragut was furious that a single boat
wreaked such havoc on his force. The engagement temporarily shifted
Confederate fortunes on the Mississippi, but not for long. The Arkansas,
pursued by the Union ironclad Essex, fled down the river
and experienced mechanical problems. On August 6, the ship ran aground,
and the crew blew it up to keep it from falling into Yankee hands.

1856 Natal established as a British colony separate from
Cape Colony 1815 Napoléon Bonaparte captured

^1806 Expedition to explore US Southwest
Zebulon Pike, the U.S. Army officer who in 1805 led an exploring party
in search of the source of the Mississippi River, sets off with a
new expedition to explore the American Southwest. Pike was instructed
to seek out headwaters of the Arkansas and Red rivers and to investigate
Spanish settlements in New Mexico.
Pike and his men left Missouri and traveled through the present-day
states of Kansas and Nebraska before reaching Colorado, where he spotted
the famous mountain later named Pike's Peak in his honor. From there
he traveled down to New Mexico, where he was stopped by Spanish officials
and charged with illegal entry into Spanish-held territory. His party
was escorted to Santa Fe, then down to Chihuahua, Mexico, back up
through Texas, and finally to the border of the Louisiana Territory,
where they were released. Soon
after returning to the east, Pike was implicated in a plot with former
Vice President Aaron Burr to seize territory in the Southwest for
mysterious ends. However, after an investigation, Secretary of State
James Madison fully exonerated him.
The information he provided about the little explored U.S. territory
in Kansas and Colorado was a great impetus for future U.S. settlement,
and his reports about the weakness of Spanish authority in the Southwest
stirred talk of future U.S. annexations. Pike later served as a brigadier
general during the War of 1812, and in April of 1813 he was killed
by a British gunpowder bomb after leading a successful attack on York,
Canada.

2006
Dr. Nicholas Bartha M.D., from injuries suffered in the 10 July
2006 gas explosion by which he attempted suicide and destroyed his $6.4
million 4-story house on 62nd Street between Park and Madison avenues in
the Upper East Side of Manhattan, so that it could not be sold to pay for
a $4 million judgment in favor of his Jewish, Dutch-born ex-wife, Cordula
Bartha, whom he hated. 10 firefighters and 4 other persons were injured
as a result of the explosion. Nicolae (= Miklos in Hungarian) Bartha was
born on 16 January 1940 in Romania, in a family of Hungarian origin. —
Nicholas Bartha s-a nascut in 1940 la Rosia Montana, Veres Patak, Transylvania,
a inceput scoala primara la bunica sa din Cluj, iar cand avea 12 ani tatal
lui a fost arestat pentru a spune unde a ascuns mai multe kilograme de aur
si a fost condamnat la doi ani de inchisoare. In 1960 a intrat la Medicina
si a fost exmatriculat doi ani mai tarziu, din cauza aceleiasi probleme.
In 1964 a putut sa paraseasca tara. A plecat intai in Israel, iar dupa ce
tatal sau a fost eliberat din inchisoare, s-au intalnit la Roma, prin intermediul
unui preot de la Vatican, si un an mai tarziu au emigrat in SUA, unde pana
la urma a ajuns si mama Ethel Bartha [25 Apr 1918 – 25 Jun 1997],
sa. — Bartha's
bitterly autobiographical final E-mail — (060716). 2002 Samantha Runnion, 5 [photo >], sexually
abused, and murdered by suffocation after being abducted kicking and screaming
by Alejandro Avila who drove up making a U-turn and asked for help finding
his dog, as Samantha was sitting on a wall 50 m from her townhouse complex
home in Stanton, California, playing a board game with a friend, Sarah Ahn,
5, who would give police an amazingly accurate description of the abductor
and of his car. Samantha's nude body, would be found the next day 120 km
away, on the edge of the Cleveland National Forest. Avila would be arrested
on 19 July 2002. In 2000 Avila was acquitted by a jury of molesting two
girls in Riverside County. One of the girls, the 9-year-old daughter of
Avila's ex-girlfriend Mrs. Elizabeth Veglahn Coker, lived in the same townhouse
complex as the Runnions.
2001 Ramesh Narayanan, 38, his wife Kanchana,
34, and their three daughters, ages 10, 9, 1. Their bodies are found
early the next morning on a bed in their home in the Anna Nagar neighborhood
of Chennai, India. A couple of soft drink bottles, five empty glasses and
a vial with an insecticide label are found on a nearby table. A suicide
note by Narayanan implies that police harassment drove him to kill himself.
Suicide or murder masquerading as suicide? Narayanan was a wealthy civil
contractor and a close associate of Chennai Mayor M.K. Stalin.
2000 John O. Pastore, 93, former Rhode Island governor
and longtime U.S. senator.

^1997 Gianni Versace, murdered, fashion designer.
Spree killer Andrew Cunanan murders world-renowned Italian fashion
designer Gianni Versace on the steps outside his Miami mansion. Versace
was shot twice in the head, and Cunanan fled. Andrew Cunanan had no
criminal record before the spring of 1997, when he began a killing
spree in Minneapolis. On 27 April 1997, after traveling from San Diego,
Cunanan bludgeoned Jeffrey Trail to death. Trail was an acquaintance
of David Madson, an ex-lover of Cunanan's whom Cunanan in turn murdered
on 03 May. Cunanan shot Madson in the head, dumped his body near a
lake outside Minneapolis, and took his red Jeep Cherokee.
Two days later, in Chicago, he gained access to the estate of wealthy
developer Lee Miglin, beat him to death, and stole his Lexus. On 09
May Cunanan abandoned Miglin's automobile in Pennsville, New Jersey,
and shot cemetery caretaker William Reese to death for his red pickup
truck. With a massive FBI manhunt for Cunanan already underway, he
drove down to Miami Beach and on July 11 was recognized by a fast-food
employee who had seen his picture on the television show America's
Most Wanted. However, the police arrived too late, and four days later
Cunanan shot Versace to death outside his South Beach mansion. Although
Cunanan and Versace were both openly gay and ran in similar circles,
the police failed to find evidence that they had ever met. Versace's
killing set off a nationwide manhunt for Cunanan, who was famous for
his chameleon-like ability to appear differently in every picture
taken of him. However, on 23 July, the search ended just 40 blocks
away from Versace's home on a two-level houseboat that Cunanan had
broken into. There, police found him dead from a self-inflicted bullet
wound from the same gun that took the lives of two of his victims.
He left no suicide note.

1992 Darrell Ferguson, 19, in Alexandria, Virginia, shot
by Robert “Bobby” Lee Ramdass, 20, who would be sentenced to
life imprisonment for this and the 30 August 1992 attempted murder of an
Arlington County cab driver. On 10 October 2000 Ramdass would be executed
for the 02 September 1992 murder of Mohammad Z. Kayani, a Fairfax County
convenience store clerk born in Afghanistan. — (060808)1961
Nina
Karlovna Bari, hit by a Moscow subway train in front of which
she fell (or jumped?), Russian mathematician born on 19 November 1901.1948 John J. Pershing, 87, US General (WW I)1931
Ladislaus
Josefovich Bortkiewicz, Russian mathematician born on 07 August
1868.1916 (05 July?) Georges Lemmen, Belgian Art
Nouveau painter born on 25 November 1865.  MORE
ON LEMMEN AT ART 4 JULY with
links to many images.

1904
(02 July Julian) Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, of tuberculosis,
in Badenweiler, Germany, great Russian playwright, story writer [biografiya]
born on 29 January (17 January Julian) 1860.
CHEKHOV ONLINE (in the original Russian):

^
1863 The victims of the third day of the New York City Draft Riots
During the Civil War, major riots break out in New York City against
the implementation of the first wartime draft in US history. The majority
of the rioters are Democratic Irish laborers outraged that exemptions
from the draft can be legally bought for $300, a small fortune out
of reach of the average worker. Many of the rioters are also opposed
to the Union war effort because of fears of losing their jobs to emancipated
African-American slaves. The
conscription act, passed by Congress on 03 March, called for registration
of all males between the ages of twenty and forty-five years by 01
April. On 11 July, the first names of draftees were drawn in New York
City. Two days later, a mob swarmed into the draft office at 3rd Avenue
and 45th Street in Manhattan, set it on fire, and nearly beat the
superintendent to death. Within an hour, the entire block was burning,
the riot was spreading, and looting had begun. The Federal troops
usually stationed in the city had not yet returned from Gettysburg,
so New York City police faced the enraged mobs alone. Well-dressed
men on the street were beaten, a police captain was killed, and several
Protestant churches were burned. The mob then turned it anger against
African Americans, and eleven people were lynched, burned alive, or
beaten to death. By 15 July several
dozen protesters had been killed along with another policeman, and
the first troops hastily marching back from Gettysburg arrived. Before
the riot was suppressed the next day, eight soldiers and scores of
rioters had been killed. In total, over one hundred people perished
during the four days of violence. Protests and riots against the draft
also erupted elsewhere, but none as costly as those that occurred
in New York. New York’s city council later announced that city funds
would pay the $300 commutation fee for any man too poor to pay it
himself, and in August, the draft act was suspended all across the
Union.

1853 (1855?) Wilhelm Alexander Wolfgang von Kobell, German
painter, printmaker, and teacher, born on 06 April 1766.  MORE
ON VON KOBELL AT ART 4 APRIL
with links to images. 1841 Félix
Savary, French mathematician, astronomer, physicist, born on
04 October 1797. He worked on electromagnetism and electrodynamics; he wrote
Mémoire sur l'application du calcul aux phenomènes élecro-dynamique
(1823). He proved Savary's theorem on the curvature of a roulette (curve
traced out by a point on a curve which rolls on another curve). He wrote
on the rotation of magnets, applied the laws of gravity to determine the
orbits of double stars in close orbit round each other (1827), and studied
the intensity of magnetism through an electrical discharge (1827). 1823 St Paul's Outside the Walls, destroyed by a fire.
The original church was erected in Rome in AD 324 by emperor Constantine.1821 (25 July?) John Lewis Krimmel, US
painter born German on 30 May 1786.  MORE
ON KRIMMEL AT ART 4 JULY
with links to many images.1765 Charles André van Loo,
French artist born on 15 February 1705. — more1609 Annibale Carracci, Italian painter born on 03 November
1560.  MORE
ON CARRACCI AT ART 4 JULY
with links to many images.1099 Un massacre marque la fin
"officielle" de la première Croisade, après que les Infidèles
eussent restitué les Lieux Saints (Tombeau du Christ) aux Croisés, sous
l’autorité de Godefroy de Bouillon (selon le poète italien Le Tasse). 
The Muslim citizens of Jerusalem surrender their city to the armies of the
First Crusade. The Crusaders then proceeded, through misguided religious
zeal (??!!), to massacre thousands of unarmed men, women and children. 0998 Mohammad
Abu'l-Wafa al-Buzjani, Persian mathematician and astronomer
born on 10 June 940.

1996
MSNBC debut, all-news cable TV channel, a joint venture between
Microsoft and NBC. A companion Web site scheduled for simultaneous launch
appears online several hours late due to technical problems.1946
Hassanal Bolkiah, who would become the 29th Sultan of Brunei in
1968. (National holiday).1930 Stephen
Smale, mathematician who received the Fields medal in 1966
for his work on differential geometry

^1919 Iris Murdoch, author of 26 intellectually
rigorous novels, in Dublin.
Murdoch's family moved to London
when she was still an infant. Her father, who worked in the civil
service, encouraged her to read and discuss books, and she resolved
at an early age to become a writer. After earning her degree at Oxford,
she worked for the British Treasury and the United Nations until the
end of World War II, then returned to academia to become a philosophy
professor. She began teaching at Oxford in 1948, where she met her
future husband, John Bayley. Several years younger than Murdoch, Bayley
fell in love with her at first sight as she rode by his room on a
bicycle one day. The pair married in 1956.
Murdoch published her first book, a philosophical study of Sartre,
in 1953, and her first novel, Under the Net, was published
the following year. She wrote two dozen novels, for example Severed
Head, as well as numerous scholarly works and several plays.
She won the Booker Prize for The Sea, the Sea (1978). Many
of her works were turned into plays. Murdoch was named a Dame of the
Order of the British Empire in 1987 and won many other awards during
four decades of writing. In the mid-1990s, Murdoch was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's and died in 1999; not long after, Bayley published Elegy
for Iris, a critically acclaimed memoir of their marriage and
her decline.

1916 Pacific Aero Products, the future Boeing Co., founded
in Seattle. was founded in Seattle.1909 William
Gemmell Cochran, Scottish US mathematical statistician who
died on 29 March 1980. 1906 Adolf
Andrei Pavlovich Yushkevich, Jewish Ukrainian historian of
mathematics, who died on 17 July 1993.1898 Mead Schaeffer,
US artist who died in 1980.1895 Ernst Huber, Austrian
artist who died in 1960.1875 Rudolf Lévy,
Orthodox Jewish German painter who died deported in northern Italy, in January
1944 after the 13th. — more1873 Hendrik Jan Wolter, Dutch artist who died in 1952.1869 Margarine, patented in Paris, for use by French Navy.1868 Bert Greer Phillips, US artist who died in 1956. —
links to images.1865 Wilhelm
Wirtinger, Ybbs-an-der-Donau Austrian mathematician with wide-ranging
interests, who died on 15 January 1945.1861 Karl Hartmann,
German artist who died in 1927.1854 Jacek Malczewski,
Polish painter who died on 08 October 1929.  MORE
ON MALCZEWSKI AT ART 4 OCTOBER
with links to images. >1850 Maria Francesca
“Frances Xavier” Cabrini [–22 Dec 1917], Italian-born,
first US citizen to be declared a saint. She was born two months prematurely,
the 10th of 11 siblings, of which only 4 lived long enough to become adults.
She was frail and in poor health all her life, which is why she was refused
admission to several religious orders, including the Daughters of the Sacred
Heart, from whose school she graduated in 1868 as a teacher. — bio@mothercabrini.org
— wikibio
—(091113) 1796
Thomas Bulfinch mythologist (Bulfinch's Mythology) 1779
Clement Clarke Moore US, Episcopal educator. His fame endures today,
not as a theologian, but as the author of a completely mythical poem: 'Twas
the Night Before Christmas' [A Visit from St. Nicholas] (1823).1718
Alexander Roslin, Swedish painter who died on 05 July 1793. 
MORE
ON ROSLIN AT ART 4 JULY 05
with links to images.1701 Pierre Joubert (Sr.) [–1766],
who would become a cobbler, and who would
be confused with his son, also named Pierre Joubert (Jr.) [09 Mar 1732
– 16 Nov 1814], who would therefore be believed to be the oldest known
Canadian, at his death, 113 years and 124 days after the birth of Pierre
Joubert Sr. The matter was further complicated by the fact that Pierre Joubert
Jr. had a son Pierre François Joubert [11 Aug 1775–]. —(081113)

Winner Jerome Radding, M.D. 
when the Russian space station burned up in its final descent through the atmosphere,
so it cast a glow on the face of a young Fiji girl sitting on the beach, causing
her boy friend sitting next to her to utter, "Bei MIR bist du schoen."
 Dishonorable Mentions:

1) Harry W. Hickey  The Sultan
... [decided] ... that though most computers in the Palace Administration should
run under WINDOWS, yet the Harem Management must be served by UNIX.

2) Harry W. Hickey  ... though
his armor had been formed on German anvil, yet ... in that mail there was a
Czech!

3) David Bubenik 
This is a story of twin Siamese kittens, or, more specifically, of their shared
appendage; it is a tail of two kitties.

4) Allan W. Eckert  Dispatched
... to interview ... spiritualist Serrafima Raire, in her grass shack, ... London
Times ace reporter John Donne found her dying of jungle fever, forcing
him to ... cable to the home office, "Medium Raire not well - Donne."

Runner-Up Susan Blevins: While they listened to ... Wayne Newton, ... as Shane
drew a final ... drag from his cigarette, an errant breeze hijacked an ember
 only to release it into ... Tiffany's [hair]; but Shane ... could muster
no plan of rescue until he heard Wayne Newton intone, "Dunk her, Shane."
Dishonorable Mentions:

Glenn Wasson  ... as he dissected the ... sheep, [Dr. Doolittle declared]
that the malady was ... contagious and that it was our ... duty to guard the
[organs] from ... biological terrorists, so all through the night o'er the ram
parts we watched.

Marian Booker  Bruce remained on bended knee in front of Sheila, who
fixed him with a gaze as cold as a seven-bone roast which had been in the coldest
part of the freezer for eight months, ... and then Bruce knew with certainty
that, as usual, Sheila was going to give him the cold shoulder.

Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree  It's hard to believe that Lucy and I are actually
getting married, considering ... that her ... father owns the local NFL franchise,
and I'm just a ... member of the grounds crew, ... painting the team logo on
the field, ... . . . but I dye grass.

Bill Crowley  ... at Fleishacker Zoo, Norman ... [reflected on] the
stupidity that had cost him ... his job  ... he forgot to put the locks
on the Bay Gulls.

Rev. William F. Charles  The ... pregnant, kimono-clad bride, the ...
groom with the odd shoes, the angry Japanese [noble]man with ... a really big
sword  all the makings of a shogun wedding.

Thoughts for the day:It is better to live rich than to die rich.
 {not for your heirs, it isn't!}It is better to live happy than to live rich.
 {but one is not necessarily incompatible with the other}
Clear enough for you?